Trapped in a world he is not designed to cope with, Dave-El (the true Kryptonian name of alleged Earth creature David Long) writes about comics, Doctor Who, politics and whatever damned thing pops into his unbalanced mind.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Let's Poke Angry America With a Stick

I gotta tell you, I love politics. And when I say “I love
politics”, I mean that in the same way you might say “I love horror games” or
“I love slasher flics”. All these have in common the opportunity to witness
such a plethora of ways to destroy and be destroyed.

All eyes are on the American Presidential race and particularly the
clusterfuck that are the Republican primaries. In case you haven’t noticed, the
guy the Republicans really, really don’t want to win this thing… is winning
this thing. After coming in 2nd in Iowa, Donald Trump has won three
states in a row. And not by some kind of squeaky just under the wire type of
margin but really wide margins. Dare I say it, Donald’s margins of victory have
been HUGE. And looking ahead at the next dozen or so states set to vote,
Donald’s currently polling ahead of the other GOP candidates in most of them.

How is this happening? Well, you know how in horror stories
where the gang of teenagers happen upon some kind of gruesome creature. it's quiet. It's still. it's probably dead, right? Let's poke it with a stick.

"No, don't poke it with a stick!" But who listens to you?

POKE! Nothing.

And you're yelling at these morons, "No, run the other way!"

But they don't listen. They poke it again but it doesn't move. And they laugh as they poke it again. Nope, it's-

YEEEEEEARRRFGGGHHHHHH!

And the creature eats the teenagers. Except for the blonde with the big tits who spends the rest of the movie running away from the creature.

Republicans have put themselves in this mess. They’ve been stoking the
anger of its base for years in a blind effort to obtain and maintain political
power. Always poking at the anger.

Anger at the “failures” of government. POKE!

Anger at the “anti-American
actions” of Democrats. POKE!

Anger at Obama for daring to exist. POKE! POKE! POKE!

What Donald Trump
has done is not just poke at that anger with a stick but internalized that
anger, making it his and giving voice to an entire constituency. You’re mad as
hell at the way things are? Donald Trump is even MADDER than hell and his anger
is HUGE and his solutions to all that anger will be AWESOME! It’s a message of
rage and hate and ignorance and damned if it isn’t working. It’s working on a
demographic that’s been primed for this for the last two decades. Trump is just
swooping in taking full advantage of that market.

So what happens next? Well….

We get President Trump. No, I just can’t….I
can’t even…no. Just…. No.

Trump gets the GOP nomination but gets romped
and stomped by Hillary. Or Bernie but that’s looking less likely. Sorry, Bern.

Trump gets to the Republican convention with the
majority of votes but somehow someone (Marco Rubio? But he's so cute and tiny!) has more delegates and
gets the nomination. Trump goes all gonzo volcano eruption on how the GOP rules have
thwarted the will of the voters and well, it’s just a mess.

Somehow, Trump gets derailed before getting to
the Republican convention but let’s face it. Whoever goes out there as the face
of the GOP with the nomination is going to have to answer for the majority of a
party that supported various racist, hate filled, ignorant statements and
proposals.

Even a best case scenario sees a damaged and broken
Republican Party stumbling into November and likely defeat to take the White
House. And you can blame it on Donald Trump if you want but Trump's only taking advantage
of the GOP marketplace he found there.

And the Republican Party is continuing to damage itself
without Trump’s help. Over in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
continues to hold firm and double down on the commitment that the Senate will
not meet to review any nominee President Obama puts forth to fill the vacancy
on the Supreme Court left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

As I covered this before, there is so much wrong with this scenario and really precious little to gain from such actions other than just taking advantage of yet another excuse for Mitch McConnell and his ilk to be shitty towards Obama one more time.

Here's the thing: all those angry people powering Donald Trump's crusade? Probably not big fans of Obama.

BUT...

They're also not big fans of politicians playing games instead of getting shit done. McConnell and his cohorts dicking around with the Supreme Court is just the sort of thing that has a tendency to blow up back in everyone's faces. Yeah, you gain a short term "win" by fucking with Obama again but what about the long term "loss" that comes with fucking with the American people? It's this sort of behavior that really fuels the rage of the angry electorate against the whole political system.

All in all, the Republican Party laid out the welcome mat for someone like Donald Trump and he saw the opportunity. And it was HUGE! By the way, if you thought I was going to let a politically themed post go by without taking a knock at Ted Cruz, I think I'm going to let The Onion* do the heavy lifting on that today.*Amended, 02/27/2016, 6:45 PM: Oh, speaking of The Onion, yesterday's blog had a link to a very amusing Onion feature...that didn't work. I have since fixed the link to that article in yesterday's post. Or you can use the link here. Really, I think it's a hilarious piece.

Everyone, be good to one another. I'll be back tomorrow with my breathlessly awaited last minute picks for Sunday night's Oscars.